


Agent Green Eyes

by helsinkibaby



Series: Sotto Voce [5]
Category: Jake 2.0
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Het, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 19:38:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2320964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at the events of "Middleman" through Kyle's (green) eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Agent Green Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> 10 years ago, this plot bunny was put into my head, mostly written and then forgotten about. I tidied it up, rewrote chunks and when I uploaded the rest of my Jake 2.0 fics on here, it seemed a good time to put it up!

After three hours of Jake sitting in front of a computer, running routing numbers in an effort to find who paid a half million dollars into Vasily Koronkiewicz’s bank account, Kyle can’t take it anymore. Coffee, strong coffee at that, is a necessity, for Jake as well as for him, so it’s off to the one place in the entire NSA building where he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the best coffee is to be found.

He’s careful when he walks into the lab, looking around him, just like he would when scouting any new location when out in the field, and he’s relieved when he sees that there is no-one around. It’s hardly the first time that he’s snuck down to the lab in search of coffee, or oftentimes in search of something else, but those times are long past now. He knows that, but still, when he walks into the lab, it’s like his mind plays tricks on him, the fabric of time folding in upon itself, and he’s just a guy who’s sneaking around, trying to catch his girlfriend unawares.

He loved to do it when they were dating, and he still likes it now, leans against the doorframe, watching her profile as she leans into a microscope. He can see that her nose is scrunched up in concentration – and how many times, he wonders, did he teasingly rub the bridge of her nose, making believe that he was rubbing those lines out? – and the fingers of her right hand tap a rhythmic pattern against the table. Had he seen her like this at any other time, he would have laid good money on her lips being pursed in concentration, but they’re not. Instead, she’s humming a tune to herself, every so often adding the vocals, and it takes some effort for him to straighten up, literally having to force himself to do it.

In the year or so that they were dating, he’d grown used to hearing her break absent-mindedly into song, usually when she was doing some kind of household chore.

He’s just never realised how much he missed it before.

“Breaking out the Alicia, huh?” he asks, finally placing what the song is, and he feels only mildly guilty when she jumps, emitting a gasp, turning to him with wide eyes. “Sorry,” he says, holding up both hands.

“It’s ok.” Diane waves a hand, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment. “And yes… Alicia Keys… she played at Wolf Trap at the weekend.”

Kyle lifts an eyebrow, recalling many nights spent there with Diane at his side. “Wolf Trap, huh? Haven’t been there in a while.”

Diane shrugs and shifts on her feet, looking away from him, and he knows what that look means; that she’s uncomfortable about something. Which is something that confuses him, because, after all, it was a fairly innocuous comment. He’s beginning to think that maybe he’s reading her wrong, but then she looks back at him, crossing her arms over her chest, shifting her stance again so that one hip is jutting out towards him, in her classic defensive pose. “It was nice,” she says, in a very final tone, and before he can investigate further, she’s pressing right on. “So, what brings you down here?”

Fixing her with his most beseeching smile, he tilts his head in the direction of her coffee machine. “Fuel for a weary body,” he tells her, and she rolls her eyes.

“You only want me for my coffee?” she asks, but she’s moving towards the pot anyway.

“What can I say, I’m shallow,” he counters, and she laughs, a light carefree sound that he hasn’t heard enough lately, what with all the hoop-la over Jake and his new abilities. There is a ceramic mug beside the machine, one of the spares that she keeps around, which makes him remember something else that she keeps around the lab. Thus he finds himself in front of the cabinet where she hides her chocolate, is rummaging through her stash, looking for nothing in particular, when she speaks again, her voice hovering somewhere around wry amusement.

“Coffee and candy? Your doctor is going to love you.”

He has to bite his tongue to stop the obvious retort from slipping out, selecting a bar and turning slowly to see her holding out a steaming mug to him. “Is there more?” he wonders, and, off her glare, adds quickly, “I promised Jake I’d bring some back for him.”

Diane looks as if she’s about to say something, then visibly bites her tongue, looking to the ceiling. “You two are going to be the death of me,” she mutters, but she crosses the room, goes to a different cabinet and taking out another mug. “I… um… I heard he made himself useful at the bank.”

Kyle grins. “Wouldn’t have made it without him,” he says honestly. “Though I think he’s regretting it now…” Diane lays the mug on the counter beside the coffee pot, but doesn’t make any moves to fill it, evidently considering this a long conversation, something that Kyle’s not entirely adverse to, and she lifts an eyebrow in unspoken question. “He’s been running the routing number for the last three hours, getting nowhere,” he tells her. “It’s going to be a long day.”

Watching Diane’s reaction, once again, he gets the feeling that he’s said the wrong thing, because Diane’s lips are pursed, and he knows from experience that she’s an inch away from tutting loudly. “They’re all long days,” she points out, and he can’t say he disagrees with her. “I’m worried about him Kyle, how he’s handling it.”

Kyle takes a sip of his coffee, feels the caffeine hit immediately, is grateful for it. “Jake’s handling it fine,” he tells her, and she crosses her arms over her chest, leans against the counter.

“Is he?” she demands. “You don’t think he’s been… isolating himself?” His confusion must show on his face, because she runs a hand through her hair, then pushes her glasses up on her nose. “He works all the hours that God sends, at the weekend he sat around, looked at football all day… I mean, we moved his apartment, shipped his best friend to the other side of the planet…” She shakes her head again, looks down at the floor, scuffing a mark there with the toe of her shoe. “I don’t know… I just think he needs to get out more…”

Something in her tone, in the words she uses, combined with their conversation of minutes ago, makes something click in Kyle’s head, and suddenly, he knows exactly why she was so uncomfortable earlier on. “And have you been getting out more?” he asks, knowing he’s right when her cheeks flush scarlet. She opens her mouth as if to answer, then closes it again, and he lets his smile spread slowly across his face.

“This isn’t about me-” she objects, and he nods quickly.

“Of course not.” His voice is as conciliatory as can be, and she visibly relaxes. Which, of course, is when he goes in for the kill. “What’s his name?”

Her cheeks darken even further, something he wouldn’t have said was possible, and he can practically hear the wheels turning in her head. Finally, she heaves a sigh, looks down, then meets his gaze again. “Steve Clemens,” she says. “He’s in cryptology.”

A surge of something that feels very like jealousy surges through Kyle’s veins, surprising him, and he takes a sip of coffee in an attempt to dampen it. “Cryptography?” he asks. “Does he line his office with aluminium foil to keep out the brainwave scanners?”

Up to now, Diane’s gaze had been one of amused resignation; with that quip, it jumps straight to harried frustration. “You sound like Jake,” she tells him, and he claps a hand to his chest in mock-hurt.

“There’s no need for that,” he says, pretending affront, and, luckily enough, she laughs. “Seriously though,” he continues, because he wants to know. “How long have you been seeing him?”

Diane shifts again, uncomfortably. “Not too long,” she says. “I mean, it’s new, and I don’t want to jinx it, and I don’t know if it’s going to go anywhere, what with my job and his job, and this place, and I mean, really, who knows what’s going to happen…”

“But you like him.” He cuts across her, stilling her words, stilling her hands, which were moving rapidly and she pulls in a deep breath, lets it out in a huff of air.

“Yes,” she says. “I do.” Looking up at him through her eyelashes, she bites her lip, as if waiting for his reaction.

Which he would give, if he knew what it was.

On one hand, he and Diane were over a long time ago. As well as the brief re-kindling of his ultimately doomed affair with Mei Ling Wong, he hasn’t exactly been idle on the dating scene, has a date with Megan Reilly tomorrow night in fact, always assuming this case doesn’t get in the way. He’s moved on with his life, and he knows he should be happy that Diane’s doing the same.

However, she’s talking about Steve Clemens with the same look in her eye she used to get when she talked about him, and something about that makes his gut twist.

He doesn’t tell her that though, instead taking a step towards her, laying a hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently. “Good,” is all he says, happy at the look of intense relief that he sees in her eyes. “I’d better get back,” he says after a moment of standing there, just looking at her, and she nods, turns back to the coffee pot, pours him another mug.

“You’re not going to tell anyone about this?”

For a moment, he’s lost for words, not sure if she’s talking about the conversation, or them, or Steve. Then he realises that she doesn’t want to share her coffee with just anyone, so he smiles. “Your secret’s safe with me,” he promises.

*

It takes a considerable amount of effort, but he manages to put the thought of Diane’s new boyfriend, and his decidedly ambivalent feelings about it, to the back of his mind. He doesn’t think of it again until he’s sitting in a car with Jake, parked at the corner of 6th and F, chasing down a lead Jake found. It’s how he found it that worries Kyle, because he’d found the younger man asleep in Sat Ops this morning, cup of coffee – probably not the first one, Kyle’s willing to bet, and definitely not Diane’s brew – dripping dark coloured liquid on to the floor. It was fairly evident that he’d spent the entire night there, running down leads, and since when Kyle had left, Jake had been on his way out too, had been muttering something about going down to Diane to get checked out. Seven hours of staring at a computer screen had left him goggle-eyed, and while training the new agent had threatened to, at the very least, send Kyle prematurely grey, for once, on this occasion, he’d felt nothing but sympathy for the younger man.

How he’d ended up there all night, Kyle didn’t know, but in the split second that he’d seen Jake sleeping, before the beeping of the machine had woken him up, Kyle had heard Diane’s voice loud and clear in his head. “He works all the hours God sends… I don’t know… I just think he needs to get out more…”

Looking at him, Kyle had to admit that she had a point, and while getting out into the field probably wasn’t what she had in mind, it was the best he could do on short notice.

Though now, sitting here with Jake, he’s beginning to regret it a little.

“I think I dreamed about routing numbers,” Jake complains, the latest in a litany of grumbles that includes a sore neck, gritty eyes, and the quality of coffee available in the NSA coffee machines. That much has Kyle biting his cheek to keep a smirk from his lips, because it’s something that he’s thought many and oft over the last few years, but he hadn’t commented on it, not even when – and especially not when – Jake wondered where he’d got his fabulous coffee from. “Little green glowing numbers, chasing after me… with knives… like the shower scene in Psycho but scarier…”

Jake’s voice trailed off as one hand reached up to rub his eyes, and Kyle took his eyes off the street for just a second to glance in his direction. Jake looked like someone who had spent the entire night working, and the entire day before that; pasty skin, shadows under his eyes, frown lines etched deeply into his forehead. “I just don’t know why you didn’t go home,” he says now, words that bring a huff of something that might vaguely resemble laughter from Jake.

“Not like I had anything better to do,” he tells Kyle, more than a hint of bitterness in his tone, and once again, Kyle hears Diane’s voice in his head, sees her big brown eyes dark with worry.

God help him, he’d never been able to resist those eyes.

“You need to get out more,” he observes, turning his attention back to the street, and this time, there’s a definite snicker from Jake.

“You sound like Diane,” he says, and once again, Kyle finds himself biting the inside of his cheek to keep back a smile.

“Diane’s a smart lady,” he says instead, and Jake doesn’t argue. “Maybe you should listen to her… there’s more to life than the NSA.”

He chances another glance at Jake, sees the other man roll his eyes. “So I’ve been told,” is his dry response.

It sounds like an attempt to end the conversation, and normally, Kyle would be happy to let it drop. Once more, however, Diane’s eyes cajole him into saying something he never thought he’d heard himself saying. “Look, I’ve been seeing this girl, Megan Reilly… if you want…”

“No.” The word is firm, loud as a gunshot in the quiet of the car, and Kyle can’t remember Jake ever speaking to him that way. “I don’t need to be fixed up on a blind date Kyle…” A shake of the head, another huff of air through pursed lips. “As a matter of fact, I have a date tonight. Sarah and I are going to the Saint Sebastian’s fund raiser.”

Without looking away from the street, Kyle raises an eyebrow, surprised that Jake’s actually gotten that far with Sarah, more than a little relieved that he’s not going to take him up on his offer. “Good then,” he says, and he expects that to be the end of that.

Of course, this is Jake he’s with. 

“I can’t believe you offered to fix me up…” he mutters. “I mean… what is it with you and Diane?” That does make Kyle turn his head sharply, wondering if Jake’s noticed something, if they’ve inadvertently given themselves away somehow. But Jake’s not looking at him, his gaze trained on the street like the good agent that Kyle’s training him to be. “Just because you’re both seeing people, you think I should be too? I can understand it from her, some sort of chick thing where they want people to be all coupled up… but you…”

Kyle’s eyes dart to Jake, then back again, so fleetingly that he’s sure Jake doesn’t notice. “Diane’s seeing someone?” he asks mildly, and he knows he’s playing with fire, knows that he could very easily let something slip here, knows that he’s got no right to ask questions. He and Diane were over a long time ago, and what she does with her life is none of his affair. Besides, it’s not like he’s been sitting around pining after her; he’s dated other women.

But he’s got to admit, not one of them can hold a candle to her.

“Steve,” Jake says, and he manages to inject the name with more disdain than Kyle has ever heard in the other man’s tone before. It’s quite impressive actually. “Steve Clemens from Cryptology… she was out with him at the weekend… and out for dinner with him last night… you should see her, all dewy-eyed over him… she hardly knows the guy.”

This time when Kyle looks at Jake, he keeps looking at him until the other man looks back at him, sees the raised eyebrow, slightly amused look. He doesn’t pretend to be an expert in matters of the heart – he’s only ever loved two women, and he lost one and let the other go – but he knows jealousy when he hears it, and he’s pretty sure that Jake is nursing a bit of a thing for Diane, even if he doesn’t realise it yet.

Not that Kyle blames him; after all, he’s well aware of Diane’s attractive qualities.

“I’m sure Diane knows what she’s doing,” he says simply, and it’s Jake’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

“You didn’t see her around this guy,” he says. “She definitely wasn’t acting like herself. You know, when I went down there last night, with my eyeballs practically bleeding, she didn’t even do the little penlight thing?” From the corner of his eye, Kyle could just about see Jake waving his hand around, mimicking Diane’s action with the penlight. “No, she had to run. For her date. With Steve.”

There’s a distinct singsong quality entering his voice, and Kyle doesn’t even try to hide his smirk. “So she ran out on you and you decided to pull an all-nighter?” he wonders, and Jake freezes for the briefest of seconds.

“It’s not like that,” he says, and Kyle inclines his head to one side, but doesn’t comment on that.

“Do you even really need to sleep?” he wonders after a moment. “I mean, with those nanites and all…”

He meant it as a joke, but Jake’s response is terse. “No, Kyle,” he says, as close to scathingly as Jake has ever heard. “I just plug myself into an electrical outlet for a couple of minutes, and I'm good to go for the day.”

“Hey, I'm just asking,” Kyle says quickly, and he’s really not sure if his words were a joke or serious. He’d heard a lot about the nanites in the last few weeks, had heard about them when he and Diane were dating and she would tell him about the work she was doing. But for all that, the technology, the applications of it, were uncharted territory for him, for all of them. “I have no idea what it's like to have...”

Jake interrupted him, his voice still terse, Kyle’s attempts to pour oil on troubled waters seemingly coming to naught. “Kyle, I’m still human.”

“Okay, I understand.” Kyle takes a beat, just like he’d done the previous day with Diane, just long enough to let Jake think he’s off the hook. “So when you jog, do you hear that slo-mo running sound from The Six Million Dollar Man? “ A chuckle from Jake, the genuine article, more than he’d got so far, and he continues, “The one that goes - do-do-do-do-do...”

At the sound, Jake laughs. “You know ... you're dating yourself again, you know that?”

Kyle knows; he just doesn’t care, because he’s achieved his twin objectives. He’s got Jake to relax a little, and he’s changed the subject away from Diane. Besides which, it wasn’t a bad joke he thinks, and he chuckles too. He stopped abruptly however as his eyes fell on a man walking along the street, carrying a black bag.

Vasily Koronkiewicz.

“Hello,” Kyle mutters. “What do you think he's got in the bag?”

Koronkiewicz looks down at his watch just as Jake mutters, “$500,000 worth of unmarked non-sequential bills.” Even as Jake speaks, Kyle moves into field agent mode, barely acknowledging the truth of the words. Instinct takes over as he calls for backup, but he does hear Jake’s next words loud and clear, because they echo his own thoughts. “He looks nervous.”

Kyle finds it hard to keep back a grimace, because a nervous suspect never bodes well for this line of work. “Any sign of the mark?”

Jake’s voice is terse when he replies, “No.”

At that moment, a truck passes in front of their field of vision, obscuring Koronkiewicz, and the hairs on the back of Kyle’s neck stand to attention. He knows what he’s going to see when the truck disappears, and sure enough, there is an empty space where Koronkiewicz once stood. “Damn,” he mutters.

Moving as one, he and Jake leave the car, run across the street, turning the corner and looking down the alleyway. Taking out his gun, Kyle motions to Jake to wait for a moment while he takes point. Slowly, carefully, a little voice that sounds very like Diane warning him to be careful, that it’s not too long since he was shot, sounds in his head, and he pushes it away, keeping an eye out for Koronkiewicz. He turns the next corner, keeps going but sees nothing, and then he hears a commotion from behind him, the distinct sounds of a struggle.

He doesn’t try to keep back his curse as he spins around, adrenaline coursing through his veins, doubling when he turns the corner and sees Jake in trouble, pinned up against the wall by Koronkiewicz. He yells something, has no idea what, but it does the trick, Koronkiewicz turning and looking right at him, taking to his heels when he sees that Jake has back-up.

He runs, but Jake doesn’t run after him, something that strikes Kyle as odd. “You all right?” he asks when he reaches him, and Jake nods.

“Yeah,” he says, but then he looks down, and something flickers in his eyes, blood draining from his face. Kyle follows his gaze, his stomach turning at the gash he sees across Jake’s stomach, the blood spreading across his clothes.

“Oh man,” is all he says as Jake slides to the ground, and instinct once again takes over as he hears his own voice. “Emergency, we have an agent down. Repeat, we have an agent down.”

What he doesn’t say, as he looks at Jake, kneels down beside him in an effort to stem the bleeding, is the one thought that echoes through his head, a steady drumbeat building in volume.

“Diane’s going to kill me.”

*

As it turns out, Diane doesn’t kill him, but that’s only because she’s not in the lab when Jake is brought in. Even if she were, Kyle thinks that he might be safe once Fran gets a look at Jake, sees that the wound isn’t anywhere near as serious as it looked back in the alley; that, in fact, the nanites seem to be accelerating his healing process. To say that Kyle is relieved is putting it mildly, especially when he hears Fran’s blunt assessment. “You’ve got a lot of guts Jake,” she says. “But if it weren’t for the nanites, I’d be stuffing them back inside you.” Unbidden, the thought comes to Kyle that Diane would probably say the exact same thing, and it’s no surprise to him that she and Fran get along so well. The other woman started work at the lab just before he and Diane broke up, so he didn’t get to hear too much about her from Diane, but from what he had heard, the two of them got along well, mutual dislike of Doctor Gage forming a strong bond between them.

His thoughts are interrupted when Diane rushes in, panic emanating from every pore, eyes wide, babbling a mile a minute, barely listening to what Fran is telling her, wanting to double check everything for herself. Kyle knows well that they’re not going to get any sense out of her, not until she’s done that, so in a way, he’s pleased when Lou orders Jake to be in Sat Ops in fifteen minutes, walks out of the lab in the full expectation that he’s going to follow her. Kyle knows that once the rush of adrenaline has worn off, Diane’s probably going to be embarrassed that she let her panic show through so clearly, so he’s all for limiting the audience, forgetting, for his part, that it ever happened.

Which is easier than he might have thought, since Jake appears in Sat Ops three minutes before Lou ordered him to, gets right to work on tracing the wire transfer. He doesn’t seem to be showing any ill effects from his stabbing, though Kyle’s known him long enough to know that something is definitely bothering him. Still, when he goes down to LaFortunata off his own bat, thereby volunteering himself for a mission that strikes the fear of God into Kyle, and even Lou, Kyle finds himself mentally agreeing with Fran’s assessment – the boy’s got guts.

No sooner has Jake left Sat Ops than Kyle’s pager vibrates, and he looks down curiously, hoping that it’s a lead on Koronkiewicz. Instead though, he sees the terse message “Please come down here. Diane,” and he knows that it’s not a request, but rather an order, a summons that’s not to be denied. Turning on one heel, he doesn’t delay, and when he gets to the lab, she’s standing waiting for him, arms crossed over her chest, tapping one foot, the very model of impatience. Long habit tells Kyle that she’s on her own, that Fran’s not here, and when he hears her first words, he’s very glad of that.

“Good, you’re here. Take off your shirt.”

Like the message on his pager, it’s an order, not a request, and he wonders for a brief second if he heard her right. He doesn’t edit his instinctive response, a quirk of the eyebrow, crossing his own arms over his chest, mimicking her posture. “No dinner and a movie first?” he quips, and while the corners of her mouth twitch, and there’s a slight relaxing of her shoulders, she’s still capable of glaring at him, albeit with not quite half of the maximum intensity she can generate.

“Very funny,” she says dryly, in a tone that says it was anything but. “Come on, up on the table.”

She pats the table as she speaks, the one that Jake only recently vacated, and he comes towards it, shucking off his jacket even as he heckles her some more. “I’m serious… I’m pretty sure this qualifies as sexual harassment… you were at the seminar too, you should know that I could make a complaint-”

“Stop it!” The words explode from her, stilling his tongue as he sits down on the table, staring at her in shock. She looks more than a little surprised herself, eyes wide, but with something that looks like pain lurking in there as well, and when she lifts a hand up to tuck an errant curl behind one ear, he notices that it’s shaking.

“Diane?” he asks, his voice as gentle as he can make it, and she looks away, one hand going to her hip, the other kneading the bridge of her nose.

“Just don’t, ok?” It’s a plea straight from the heart, and when she looks at him again, he can read her eyes clearly; fear, pure and simple. “Jake got stabbed today,” she reminds him, and he wants to tell her that he hasn’t forgotten, couldn’t forget, but wisely, he holds his tongue. “And in case you’ve forgotten,” she continues, “It’s not that long ago that you were in the Navy Medical Centre with a gunshot wound to the stomach… you should be recuperating at home, not running around like Starsky and Hutch…”

He can’t help it; the comparison makes him sputter with laughter, hastily stifled, but it seems to relax her a little, bring a flush of red to her cheeks, especially when he teases her by saying, “I’m tempted to ask you who’s who, but I’m not sure I want to know.”

In the circumstances, the breath of almost-laughter she lets out is tantamount to having her rolling the aisles, and she looks almost like her usual self. “Look, I know what I sound like,” she says. “But just… humour me, ok?”

If Kyle weren’t already unbuttoning his shirt, that last sentence would have done it, and, most uncharacteristically for him, even more for the two of them, he sits in silence as she leans close to his chest, lifts the dressing from his wound and probes it gently. Her hands are cold against his skin, something that he’s never experienced before, because he always remembers Diane’s hands as warm, small and deft as they moved. His palms itch with the urge to take her hands in his, rub them until they’re warm, and he fights the impulse with everything he has.

There are a million reasons why he can’t do that.

Eventually – and, he wonders, was it really as long as it seemed? – she replaces the dressing and straightens up, not looking at him as she nods his head. “That’s healing nicely,” she says, as if she’s talking more to herself than to him, and he bites back a smile.

“So, I’ll live?” It’s a weak joke, one he regrets when he sees the death-glare she’s levelling his way. “Or perhaps not,” he adds, but she doesn’t crack a smile.

“I’m supposed to be a research scientist,” she tells him, her voice wracked with an insecurity he’s never heard from Diane before. “I’m not good with all this life in danger stuff…” She shakes her head. “We talk about Jake not signing up for this… he’s not the only one.”

Kyle fastens the buttons on his shirt as she talks. “You’re doing fine,” he tells her, and he senses that she wants to believe him, but isn’t sure if he’s just trying to make her feel better. Once again, he wants to reach out, lay his hands on her shoulders, her hips, pull her into his arms and offer her comfort that way; once again, he quashes the urge. “Trust me on that.”

She holds his gaze for a moment, then her features relax into a smile. “Yeah,” she says softly. “You’ll live.”

He hops off the table, straightening his tie. “Good to know.” He pulls on his jacket, and when he turns to go, sees her still watching him. Something in her eyes gives him pause, makes him look at her. “You’re going to be ok?”

“I’ll be fine,” she says, waving a hand. “Go catch some bad guys.”

“Yes Ma’am.” His mock Southern drawl and incline of the head make her laugh, and, that image firmly imprinted in his brain, he goes back to Sat Ops.

*

Diane might have told him to go catch some bad guys, but much to his surprise, his cell phone rings when he’s in the middle of dinner with Megan Reilly, and he finds that she’s been doing a little bad-guy-catching of her own. Well, not her really; her boyfriend and Jake are the ones who brought Koronkiewicz in. Kyle just gets the job of interrogating him, not that he gets very far with him. No matter what he tries, how many times he goes in and out, Koronkiewicz is implacable, and Kyle’s about ready to give up when he meets Lou outside the cell.

That’s when his boss utters the words designed to send Kyle’s blood pressure soaring. “LaFortunata called. He says he wants to talk.”

Kyle sighs, hoping for the moment that this is Lou the human being, not Lou the boss. “Yeah, and talk, and talk…” Lou smiles, enough for him to know that she’s not going to call him on his words, but not enough to let him off the hook. “I’m on it.”

Lou’s next words come as a surprise. “I’ll come with you.”

“Bless you.” It is Kyle’s instinctive response, and it brings a far more genuine smile to Lou’s lips.

Kyle finds himself smiling too, relieved that he’s not going to have to face LaFortunata on his own, but his smile fades quickly, as does Lou’s, when they hear what LaFortunata has to say, words that fix themselves in his memory as he follows Lou out of the room, as he careers through late night Washington streets, hoping he’ll get to Jake before someone else does.

“Vasily was commissioned to retrieve a human subject to get them in the nanotech game. Now, if you guys know anybody, you know, who fits that bill, now, I would recommend getting him well-protected -- they got deep, deep pockets. It is not going to end with this Vasily character.”

Still though, even though he knows what he’s doing and why, there’s still something that doesn’t quite ring true, some small nagging voice that’s set up home in the hind part of his brain, obscured by the adrenaline racing through his system. He’s tempted to blame it on his innate dislike of LaFortunata, until, that is, Jake is in the car beside him, giving him his first reaction to the news.

“That doesn't make any sense,” Jake says, and even though the other man is slightly shell-shocked, not that Kyle can blame him, after all, he did surprise the hell out of him. “He could've had me ... twice. Why didn't he take me?”

Put that way, it’s so simple Kyle can’t believe he didn’t realise it. Thankfully, there’s a simple solution. “Let's ask him.”

Which, of course, is when the wheels really come off the wagon.

Because when Kyle goes to wake up Koronkiewicz, pulls him around by the shoulder, he sees that Koronkiewicz is dead, his throat slashed, blood pooled on the bed. His first reaction is mingled shock and confusion, quickly overtaken by anger, and he rounds on the guard. “You got a dead prisoner in there -- you want to tell me what the hell happened?”

“That's impossible,” says the guard, and Kyle avoids shaking the man with great difficulty. “We searched him. No unauthorized personnel has been in there.”

Once again, Kyle’s next question is the obvious one, and he’d really rather the guard had the initiative to think of it himself. “Then what authorized person has?”

The guard checks the computer, talking as he scans the screen. “The last visitor was ...”

“Steve Clemens.”

But it’s Jake, not the guard who speaks, and Kyle turns to look at him, confused. This, he wants to say, is not the time for a bout of jealousy, but then he sees the look on Jake’s face and it all starts to fall into place easily, too easily. “What?” Kyle asks, not because he doesn’t see where Jake is going, but because he does, and he doesn’t want to believe it, knowing all too well what this could mean for Diane.

“Diane’s new boyfriend.” Jake’s either explaining it, or just thinking out loud, but either way, it all makes sense. “He's a dirty agent. He's working with Vasily. Once we caught him ... Steve had no choice. He couldn't let him talk.”

“He cut out the middleman,” Kyle surmises, and is already formulating their next move when Jake puts the finishing touches to their theory.

“He's going to finish the job, and give them exactly what they want… an expert on nano-technology. Diane.”

But even without that, Kyle is already turning to leave, sprinting to Lou’s office to tell her what they’ve found out. He’s only halfway through the explanation when Lou is moving towards Sat Ops, where Jake is already standing over Tech Agent Carver’s shoulder, spitting instructions at her, and the blonde woman is staring at the computer screen, fingers moving at lightening speed over the keyboard, as if the twin forces of their speed and her glare can find Diane. Lou takes over from Jake, barks instructions left and right, before reaching for her cell phone. Kyle does likewise, punches in Diane’s home number from memory, gets her answering machine and hangs up before he hears a beep. Her cell phone number is next on his list, again dialled from memory, and for once, he doesn’t care if anyone notices that he doesn’t have to look them up. Now’s not the time for that. The only things he’s concerned with are finding Diane, and killing Steve Clemens; he’s not sure in which order.

“Steve Clemens took the black duffel out of the evidence locker,” reports Lou when she finishes her phone call, Kyle reporting his discovery, or lack thereof, at the same time.

“Diane isn't answering her cell or home phone,” he says, and Jake says what they’re all thinking.

“Oh, no, she's with him.” Then, to Carver, “Cross-check with Steve Clemens's license plate.”

If Carver’s feeling any way odd at taking orders from Jake, she doesn’t show it. “What's the number?”

“A DC plate, 4BMH359.”

Kyle wonders briefly how Jake knew that so quickly, but puts the question out of his mind as he stands, watching license plate numbers flash by on the monitor. They’re going by twelve at a time, but are moving far too slowly for his liking, and he grits his teeth to keep his impatience at bay. He has the utmost sympathy with Jake when the younger man mutters an impatient, “Come on,” and wishes he could do the same, but knows he should keep his game face on.

One of them has to be in control here.

An age later, the computer beeps, one license plate filling the screen. Jake whips around to look at Carver, his gaze boring lasers into her, and he utters one simple word. “Where?”

“Key Bridge into Virginia.”

She’s prompt with the answer, but it’s not enough for Jake who demands, “When?”

“About fifteen minutes ago.”

Carver’s barely finished speaking when Jake is running out of the room, Kyle hot on his heels, not bothering to ask Lou for instructions. He doesn’t need to, knows what they are.

Find Diane.

That’s all that matters.

*

They’re breaking every speed limit known to man, following Steve’s route, but, just like the computers in Sat Ops, it’s still too slow for Kyle’s taste, and he checks in every other minute on the status of Steve’s vehicle, terrified of losing him. Throughout the whole drive though, Jake is silent, staring out the front window. Kyle throws glances in his direction, thinks that he’s never seen his friend so still, wonders what he’s thinking.

“Jake,” he says, in as much an attempt to reassure himself as the younger man, “Nothing's going to happen to Diane.”

Nothing’s going to happen to her, because he’s not going to let it. Because, driving like a maniac through the Washington night, he’s just realised something.

He can’t imagine his life without her in it.

What precisely that means is a thought for another time, and he waits for Jake to say something, anything.

There is no reply.

Kyle glances over at him, sees the set of his jaw, the steel cold determination burning in his eyes. He’s never seen Jake look like that before, but he looks more like an agent than he ever has.

“You pissed?” Kyle asks, knowing the answer, and Jake’s reply is cold as ice.

“Very.”

And Kyle remembers standing in the gym, training with Jake, remembers a dummy’s head exploding into dust as Jake’s fist went flying through it.

He hears his own voice, slightly amused, saying, “Remind me never to piss you off.”

And he thinks of Diane, and Steve Clemens, and what Jake will do to him when he gets his hands on him.

He’s hard pressed to keep back a satisfied smirk, contents himself with a simple, “Good.”

Two miles later, the cars come to a stop, Kyle barely applying the brakes before Jake is leaping out, looking around. Even as he’s sweeping the site, Kyle is ordering the other agents, “Fan out, fan formation. No one fires unless fired upon.” With that, they run off, and Kyle’s attention focuses on Jake, who is standing very still.

Until, that is, he breaks into a run, and, too late, Kyle remembers his nanite enhanced hearing. “Let's go, let's go!” he calls, drawing his gun, trying to keep up with Jake, his efforts rendered futile when Jakes gets to the end of the pier and, without a pause, jumps off the end, barely reaching the tail end of the boat. All Kyle can do is stand at the end of the pier, watching the boat as it moves away into the darkness, and he wonders if he should kill Steve first, or Jake.

His question is answered a long moment later when the boat turns around, comes back towards the pier. It can mean only one thing, but the agents keep their guns drawn anyway, and it’s a relief when the boat draws nearer, and Kyle can see two figures standing, facing him. Looking shaken, Diane is leaning against Jake’s shoulder, his arm around her, and Steve is nowhere to be seen. Kyle almost hopes that Jake threw him overboard, but when Jake pulls up the boat, he sees that Steve is lying unconscious at the other end.

Broken bones, he thinks, would be too much to hope for, but he forgets all about Steve when his gaze falls again on Diane. Her face is pale, the shake of her limbs visible even before the boat pulls up along the pier, and when he reaches to her to help her out of the boat, Jake steadying her from behind, the hand that closes around his is freezing. He looks down at her, meets her eyes, and for the briefest second, he’s ready to pull her into his arms, envelope her in a hug and never let her go. He checks the impulse, this being neither the time nor the place, but that’s when he sees a flicker of something in her eyes, sees her take a half-step towards him. Then her eyes flare momentarily wide and she stops dead, looking down and biting her lip as she wraps her arms around herself.

Kyle opens his mouth to say something, anything, to her, but that’s when more agents swarm around them, someone spiriting her off, still more convening on the boat to wrest Steve from Jake’s grasp. The still-unconscious man is dragged away, hopefully for a long stint in prison, and Jake and Kyle watch him go.

Only when the van pulls away does Kyle turn to Jake, saying two words that bring a smile to the other man’s face.

“Good job.”

*

It’s a long time before Kyle gets home, still longer before he falls asleep. Even when he does, his dreams are restless, full of the worst case scenario, of him and Jake being too late, of pulling Diane’s lifeless body from the water. After far too many attempts at sleep, all ending the same way, he gets out of bed and goes for a long run, hoping that the exercise will make him feel better.

It doesn’t.

He expects work, his usual refuge, to give him something else to think about. But it doesn’t work like that, not when his entire day is spent on paperwork pertaining to the case, Koronkiewicz’s murder, Diane’s kidnap, how Steve Clemens was turned in the first place. The last means that he and Lou spend several hours that seem like several years in Clemens’s cell, getting nowhere fast. The fact neither Jake nor Diane are at work today doesn’t help matters, and Kyle’s about ready to give up on the day, even before he and Lou endure the meeting from hell with Warner and Skerritt.

At five o’clock on the button, he knocks on the door to Lou’s office, ready to tell her that he’s going home, ready to beg for mercy if she asks him to stay. To his surprise though, even the usually imperturbable Lou is looking frazzled, and while she does tell him he can go, she also asks him for five minutes, and to come in and close the door.

There are a hundred ways that she could begin the conversation, but Lou being Lou, she picks the one that Kyle’s not expecting. “Have you spoken to Jake today?” she asks, and he shakes his head as he sits down.

“No,” he says. “Under the circumstances, I thought it might be wiser to let him decompress.” Because Jake’s not used to his friends’ lives being put in danger because of the work that they do, and a complete break from the NSA is probably just what the doctor ordered for him.

Lou nods. “That was wise.” She’s silent for a moment, leans back in her chair and looks at Kyle, with that look that says there’s something on her mind, something that’s escaping him completely. He’s even more sure of it with her next words, words that are totally innocuous save for the tone. She’s slightly knowing, vaguely amused when she says, “He did well last night,” and now Kyle’s sure he’s missing something.

He’s missing something, but she’s speaking the truth, so he nods. “He did.”

Another moment of silence, then the merest twitch of Lou’s lips. “So did you.”

Again, that knowing tone, and, coupled with the look on her face, Kyle suddenly remembers sitting a few months ago in a coffee house with Diane, back when this task force was just being set up and they were wondering if they should admit to people that they’d dated not that long ago. They’d agreed not to, and he’d made the point that Lou probably already knew, something that had appalled Diane. He’d never asked Lou about it, to do so being the very definition of a no-win-situation, but now it looks like he’s going to find out that he’d been right.

But, just on the off chance that he’s not, he plays it innocent, tilts his head, blinks once and says, “I did?”, all his emphasis on the first word.

Lou nods slowly. “Considering your past relationship…” is all she says, letting her voice trail off, and he looks down, allowing a smile to flit across his face.

“You know about that,” is all he says, looking up when she emits a dry chuckle.

“Don’t tell me that surprises you,” she says. “Don’t you ever wonder why I chose you both for this team?”

Just like that, Kyle’s lost again and he stares at Lou, looking for some chink in her armour, some flash of something that will clue him into her way of thinking. There’s nothing though; instead Lou fixes him with that dead-eyed stare of hers, the one that has had better men than him quaking in their boots, the one that used to scare the living daylights out of Diane once upon a time. It doesn’t have that effect on Kyle, not usually at any rate, but after the last couple of days, after this day from hell, he can’t help but feel a frisson of fear making its way up his spine.

“What do you mean?” he asks, parrying the question, trying to buy some time, and the edges of Lou’s lips turn up in a smile, something that makes him decidedly nervous, all the more so when he hears the tone of voice she adopts with her next words. It’s conciliatory, almost gentle, and he’s heard her use it in interrogation a hundred times. It’s usually immediately followed by a verbal slap to the head of the person being interrogated, a move designed to get them to break, and it’s never failed her once.

“You know what I mean.” She doesn’t take her eyes off his. “Diane was always going to be part of things… she’s the one who knows about the nanites, who can monitor Jake. As Director of Field Ops, I wasn’t going to turn over leadership of this to anyone else… but there are half a dozen agents I could have paired with Jake. Agents who had your qualifications, not to mention agents who didn’t have your past relationship with Diane… passing you over would have been controversial, but I could have done it.” All said with that light tone, then she leans forward, eyes hardening ever so slightly, but enough. “Don’t tell me you never wondered why.”

Kyle shifts uncomfortably in his seat, because the truth is, he has wondered. When this project first started, he was sure that Lou had known about his relationship with Diane, because Lou knew everything. He’d always assumed that she’d never mentioned it because it was in the past, because there was nothing between them anymore, and as the weeks and months had gone by, and he and Diane had worked together without incident, he’d managed to put it out of his mind. “I guess I thought it was because you thought I was the best man for the job,” he says, and he doesn’t care if that sounds conceited.

“I did,” Lou says promptly, which mollifies him somewhat. “And I still do. Just like I believe that Diane’s the best doctor. But I could have replaced either of you… and if I’d told Warner and Skerritt about your relationship, even though it was in the past, one or other of you would be out, and we both know it.”

“So why bring this up now?” Because even though, from the way she’s talking, Lou is trying to fill in the blanks, Kyle still can’t see what he’s missing.

“Because, Kyle,” And Lou sounds almost impatient when she speaks, “You and Diane were close… are close. You have loyalties to one another that go beyond the job… beyond Jake. This team was always going to be experimental, there was always going to be pressure… politics coming into play. What do you think the song and dance that they put us through today was about?”

The implications are obvious to Kyle. “They’re looking for an excuse to take over the program,” he surmises, and Lou nods.

“Any way they can,” she agrees. “Right from the start, I knew this was going to happen,” she continues. “That’s why I chose the people I chose. Because I needed people I could trust… people who trust each other.” At those words, the penny finally drops, and Kyle knows her next words before she even says them. “I didn’t choose you two in spite of your past relationship… I chose you _because_ of it.” 

*

When Kyle gets home, he finds that the day doesn’t end any better than it started. There are two calls on his answering machine, one from his mother, just checking to see how he is, the second from Megan, wanting to make plans for dinner. He knows he should call both women back, lifts the phone to do just that.

However, his fingers have another woman in mind, and they dial Diane’s number without his being consciously aware of it. He can’t but be aware though, of the somersault in his stomach when he hears her voice, just as he can’t but be aware of the crashing sense of disappointment he feels when he realises that it’s her answering machine.

“Hey, it’s me,” he says after the beep. “I was just calling to see how you were… if you needed to talk. You know where I am.”

Hanging up the phone, he threw it on the table, feeling strangely bereft, and not a little guilty over not calling Mama or Megan. Maybe after dinner he tells himself, going to the kitchen, nuking something that purports to be chicken in the microwave, realising when he eats it that it bears little or no resemblance to what it’s meant to be. That much done, he still doesn’t want to make any phone calls, and ten minutes in front of the television is all he needs to know that there’s nothing on worth watching. He stands and stretches restlessly, decides that he might as well go for a run – it might not have soothed him this morning, but it might do the trick now.

He takes a longer route than he usually would, doubling back several times, but it’s no good; nothing seems to be able to shake the vague sense of unease that’s lodged around his back and shoulders, that niggling feeling that something is not quite right with the world. Defeated, he makes his way back to his apartment, scalds himself under a long hot shower, and he’s on his way to the kitchen to make some hot chocolate when the phone rings.

For once hoping that it’s a matter of national security, with a need for violent conduct because that sounds damn good to him right now, he crosses the room and picks it up, only considering as he’s about to say hello that he should have screened, because if it’s Mama or Megan, he’s going to get an earful for not returning his calls. Marshalling his courage, he says “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me.” A smile comes to his face as he recognises Diane’s voice. “I… I got your message.”

“You doing ok?” he asks, dropping down on the couch and propping his feet up on the table, all thoughts of hot chocolate forgotten.

She chuckles wryly. “Aside from feeling like an idiot? I’m fine,” she says, and he shakes his head, even though he knows that she can’t see him.

“You couldn’t have known, Diane,” he tells her, and he would say more, but she interrupts him.

“That’s what Jake said,” she sighs, and he feels an irrational flare of jealousy sear its way through his body.

He pushes it aside, even managing to sound fairly convincing when he says, “Well, he’s right.” There’s a silence, then he can’t help himself, he has to ask. “Is that where you were earlier?”

“Yeah… we got pizza… some wine… played Boggle…”

She sounds vaguely distracted, and he laughs. “Jake played word games with you? He’s either very brave or very dumb.” Because he’d made that mistake once, and never again.

Diane laughs too, a genuine laugh that’s music to his ears. “Right now, I think he’s just glad we weren’t playing for money,” she says, and he grins, shaking his head.

“Would that you’d shown me that same consideration,” he quips.

“Hey, a girl’s got to have some tricks,” is her response, and he’s about to comment on that when she gasps, and he sits up a little straighter in mild panic.

“Diane?”

“ _St Elmo’s Fire_ is on,” she says, and he comes very close to rolling his eyes. “I love this movie…”

“I know you do,” he says, recalling more than one night with the two of them spent curled up on a couch, her head nestling on his shoulder as that movie played in front of them. “Haven’t you seen it, like, five hundred times?”

“Five hundred and one won’t hurt,” she retorts. “It’s right at the start too… they’re just pulling up to the hospital…”

He can hear the dialogue in the background and he sighs, embracing his fate as he leans forward, picking up the remote control. “Which channel?”

She tells him and he puts it on, the two of them falling instantly into their old habit of him lampooning the characters, her defending them. It’s not as good, he decides, as being in the same room as her, feeling her body pressed against his. But it is familiar, and comforting, and the restless feeling that’s been plaguing him all day is gone.

All in all, it’s close enough.


End file.
